Making Your Game Spicier

So, we have what we could call an Alpha build of our Galaxy Shooter game. And it plays well, if you like endless arcade action. But one type of enemy is pretty… bland. We gotta mix it up. We need to make space spicy.

We’re gonna achieve that in two ways. First, we make the player work a little harder to be the player. Right now it is too easy. We need limits on ammo, and more tools for the player to use.

The other thing we’re gonna do is add more enemy types. And they’ll all need unique surprises to keep the player guessing.

The upcoming features for this next phase of the project will mostly focus on the player experience, including:

• Speed-boost thrusters on demand with the left shift key, and an accompanying “stamina" bar.
• Three levels of shield strength, to give the player an escalating gradient from confident to nerve-wracked.
• Limited ammunition and a new ammo-replenishing powerup.
• A repair powerup to help the player step back from the brink of doom.
• A new weapon powerup, because space can always be more shootier.
• Camera shake for when the player is damaged, with increasing severity based on current status (again, to push the tactile feel of the confident/nerve-wracked gradient)

Along the way we will tweak the balance between making it harder and giving the player more options for success, until we have a more complete and enjoyable game experience.

In the next article, I will work on the first bullet of our list: adding thrusters.